On- and off-center helium atom in a spherical multilayer quantum dot with parabolic confinement

The ground state energy of a helium atom inside a spherical multilayer quantum dot as a function of the atomic impurity location inside the quantum dot has been calculated. The multilayer quantum dot is modeled by a core/shell/well/shell structure using a parabolic confinement. The Configuration Interaction method and the Diffusion Monte Carlo have been used to solve the Schrödinger equation. Results obtained showed that the lowest energy configuration depends on the size of the different layers of the quantum dot and agreement between Configuration Interaction and Diffusion Monte Carlo results indicates that the Configuration Interaction approach used here would be suitable to compute excited states of this system. Graphical abstract